Analysis, design and development of advanced planning systems

Abstract

Small and medium-sized organisations (SMO) often need to optimise their operations to improve their effectiveness in a competitive world. Advanced planning systems (APS) emerged to provide optimal operations in several areas of an organisation, including production planning and scheduling, logistics, financial, among others. Currently, there is a gap in the literature regarding proposals, from a software engineering perspective, to assist SMOs in the design and development of APS systems. This article proposes an architecture for the APS domain that supports the implementation of specific applications and can be adapted through variation points. The proposal is evaluated with architecture trade-off analysis method (ATAM) involving two different groups of stakeholders. Also, a process is included to show how to use the architecture in the implementation of a specific case. Finally, a case study based on a local industry is developed.